I pause for a second and tell myself to stop.
But I can’t.
“You have no idea what kind of an influence he is on me! You don’t know him enough to like him or dislike him! So the next time you wanna talk to me about Luis, save your breath and shove a couple jelly doughnuts in your piehole and think about who influenced YOU and made you—”
Don’t say it, Sam!
“Such a shitty teacher!”
We stand in dead silence for a second.
“I think you need to go to the office,” he says.
“Yes I do,” I say.
JELLY DOUGHNUTS
CARTER YELLS AT ME. But it’s like nice yelling. Like supportive, yet disappointed and extremely frustrated yelling. He makes me wish I hadn’t done it. But he doesn’t make me feel horrible.
He does have to suspend me. For the rest of the day. And two days after that.
I ask him if I can go back and get my new assignment—another essay from Cassidy—before I take off. He’s fine with it. Says he likes my initiative. As I’m walking out of his office, I ask if he’s heard anything about where Luis is. He’s serious when he says, “Nothing yet, Sam.”
It’s lunch. Cassidy’s in her room alone. Munching on a salad.
“Headed home?” she asks.
“Yeah. I’m—”
“Suspended. I heard. McClean.”
“He was talking crap about—”
“Luis. I heard.”
“Who told?”
“Everyone, Sam. It’s all over school.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Cassidy.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” she says.
I collapse into a seat, pissed off at myself for losing it. For wasting my energy on him.
Cassidy rolls my way in her chair and slugs me in the arm. “Buck up, cowboy! Something had to be done, so you did it. It’s over. Now, go home, get some rest, work your tail off on this assignment”—she hands me a paper—“and don’t make any plans to run for office until you clean up that gutter mouth of yours. Got it?”
“Got it.”
I start walking out, but there’s something I have to say.
“Ms. Cassidy?”
“Yes, Sam.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For calling you a B.”
She snorts a laugh and says, “Well, then, Sam, I’m sorry too.”
“For what?”
“For calling you and Luis a couple of F-in’ little S-heads on several occasions. So we’re even.”
I’m laughing now too. I hold my hand out for her to shake. “Yeah, we’re even, Ms. Cassidy. As long as you promise to clean up that mouth of yours.”
We shake. She reaches for her bag. “Krispy Kreme? I happen to have a jelly doughnut. Perfect for today. You think McClean might want one? For his piehole?”
“Nah. I think he might pass.” I bite into the doughnut.
“Sam?” Cassidy says, sounding serious now. “I’m sorry Mr. McClean said that about Luis.”
“It’s okay, Ms. Cassidy.”
“No, Sam, it’s not.”
“I know.”
AIMLESS
I SPEND THE AFTERNOON WANDERING UP AND DOWN PAC HIGHWAY, looking for Luis.
A couple kids from school—part-timers—are hanging outside the 7-Eleven. I ask them if they’ve seen him.
Nope.
I walk all the way down to the airport and all the way back.
I check out Bob’s 99 Cent Burgers and talk to the Korean lady who owns the place and works the counter. She asks me what Luis looks like. I try to describe him. She points to one of her two Mexican cooks and says, “That him?”
I get home feeling like the day was a big, fucking waste of time.
But I tell myself I’m not gonna give up.
Maybe Luis is off being a gangster. If he is, that’s on him and I can’t do crap about it.
But if there’s some other reason he’s gone—like he’s hurt or in trouble—I’m gonna find out what it is. Tomorrow I’m going back at it, back to looking for Luis. I just need a plan. I need a strategy.
I need help.
SNEAKING INTO SCHOOL
CARTER HAD ONE RULE WHEN I GOT SUSPENDED: “Don’t come back until your suspension is over.” What’s up with that? Like the kind of people who get suspended for fights and truancy and booze are clawing and scraping to get back into Puget High School?
I guess it’s not as ridiculous as it seems. Because Puget High School is where I am this very second. It’s before the first bell. I’m standing just outside the front gate.
Why am I here? When I don’t have to be? When I shouldn’t be?
Two reasons.
The first: I need a photo of Luis.
The second: I need an ally.
Yesterday, when he escorted me off campus, Mel the security guard said, “Kid, I don’t want to see you around here till your suspension is over.”
I peek inside the front door. Of course Mel is right there monitoring the texting cheerleaders from hell. He’s wearing his drop-dead serious, Don’t fuck with me or you’re headed to Gitmo—which is what he calls his office—face.
So I decide to wait him out. Just then, my first-choice ally walks by.
“Julisa?”
“Hey, Sam.”
It’s obvious she cares about Luis. And we talked that one time after the poem, so there’s a connection. Plus she’s the smartest person I know.
I tell her what’s going on. I tell her I’m looking for Luis and I need a photo of him to copy and hang on some phone poles. I need some ideas for how to get the word out that Luis is missing. I need people to help look for him.
She doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah, of course, Sam. I’ve been worried about him. Let’s get to work.”
I tell her I need to get past the security guard.
“Mel?”
“The dude is a beast.”
“Are you kidding me? Mel’s a teddy bear.”
She grabs my arm and barges in the door. “Hey, Mel, look who I caught loitering outside the building!” They joke around a bit, and Julisa tells him she’s supposed to take me to see Carter. He says, “Yeah, sure, Julisa. No prob. You take care, now.”
“Give my regards to your mom, Mel. She’s in our thoughts.”
“That means a lot, kid.”
Just like that, we’re on our way to Carter’s office.
We tell Carter what’s going on. He says he’s working to locate Luis’s mom, but hasn’t had any luck. “Let’s get that photo.”
Julisa thanks him and says, “Well, I’m headed back to class. I’ll see you in a couple days, Sam.”
What the hell?
“See you, Julisa,” I say, feeling betrayed, wondering why she changed her mind.
Carter grabs Luis’s photo out of the big picture binder he uses to nail kids when there’s a crime against school humanity and the witness isn’t able to match a perp’s name to his face. Everyone’s picture is in there. Carter makes a photocopy and calls Mel to escort me back out of the building.
I ask Mel about his mom. He tells me his mother is a beautiful and loving woman, and he and his family are just sick about her bursitis condition.
“But Mom?” he says. “She won’t let us turn this thing into a pity party. She won’t have none of that. She just takes it like a champ. Makes me love her even more, which is near impossible.”
I get past the gates with the picture of Luis.
But no ally.
I head up the road toward Pac Highway.
GREGORY, MENDEZ, AND DÍAZ
“HEY, GREGORY, WAIT UP!” Julisa shouts, establishing ours as a last-name-basis partnership. She runs a block up the hill to join me.
“You in, Mendez?” I ask.
“Yeah, I’m in. I told you I was. I just didn’t want to advertise my truancy to the vice principal.”
This is nuts. Miss Perfect, Julisa Mendez, is skipping school.
And
it’s my fault.
“What do you know about Luis?” she asks.
“I know that Thursday morning—the day before the slam—was the last time I saw him. He wasn’t in school after lunch. So it’s been a week. I’ve made phone calls to his place. Cassidy has too. No one answers. I went over to his apartment. He wasn’t home. There were a couple suspicious-looking guys hanging out there. That’s about all I got. How about you?”
“I barely know him,” she says. “We just met in class this quarter. A couple weeks ago, he started saying hi to me every day. We chatted a couple times. Small talk. He’s a sweet guy.”
Julisa and I are two kids who don’t know each other, setting out to search for a kid we barely know.
“You sure you don’t have anything else?”
I shake my head. “That’s why I got the picture from Carter.”
“It’s a start.”
“There is one thing, I guess. One time when I was over at Luis’s place, this pissed-off cholo came by looking for Luis’s brother. When he left, he mentioned this other guy, Cristián. He asked Luis if he was gonna go to Cristián’s place.”
“When would he have gone to Cristián’s?”
“Sometime in the last week. Maybe this week?”
“Any way to find Cristián?”
“Nah.”
“Think, Gregory.”
I wanted to do this without him because he’s a fucking loose cannon. But I know we need him: “Carlos Díaz.”
“Who’s that?”
“This sophomore thug who knows Luis. He might know what’s going on but he was suspended after the big fight, and I never saw him back in school.”
“He might be back by now. Wait here.”
Julisa’s not the goody-two-shoes I thought she was. What she is is an ass-kicker, ’cuz in a minute she’s found Carlos and snuck him out of school. And she’s already talked him in to taking the bus to Burien to check in with his uncle. The guy is a member of Luis’s brother’s gang. Frankie’s gang. So he’s gonna see if he can track down either Cristián or the brother and find out what’s going on.
So Díaz is off to Burien. Mendez says she’s gonna go home to scan the photo into her computer and make some posters. I tell her I’ll help her, but she says I should try Luis’s apartment one last time to make sure we don’t do a bunch of work for nothing.
We plan to meet at Bob’s 99 Cent Burgers in a couple hours. Before we split up, I give them my cell number just in case. They give me theirs and now I’ve got three names in my contacts list.
SUSPICIOUS BEHAVIOR
I TURN MY BODY IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION and head up toward Pac Highway into the glare of the one wet ray of sun managing to force its way through the black clouds.
Back to the Glen.
South past the Taco Bell.
Past the 7-Eleven, up 220th.
Past the cheap motels, past the rusty bikes and the plastic slide and the Little Mermaid, and up to door number five.
I’m relieved as hell that the two scary guys from last time are nowhere to be seen.
I knock and knock and knock—dammit!—and knock until my knuckles are raw.
I turn to go.
I’m halfway to the front gate when I see them.
Where’d they come from?
They’re staring at me again. But this time they look seriously pissed.
On the way over here, I had convinced myself these guys had nothing to do with Luis. That they weren’t really looking at me the last time. That I was imagining things.
But now one of them points right at me. And the other one takes a step my way.
I take a step toward the gate.
They take a step toward the gate.
I walk slowly and fake-confidently toward the gate.
They walk faster toward me.
I’m not imagining. I walk faster.
They start jogging.
I run.
They run.
“Stop, kid!”
This is it.
I’m gonna die.
I book toward the gate but they’re on me.
I feel the imprint of chain-link fence on the side of my face as one of them bounces me off it. I spring back, onto the ground.
They’re on top of me. One of them is on my back. The other one is pushing my face into the mud. I’m wriggling for my life and they’re yelling, “Hold up! Hold up! Who are you? What you doin’ around here? Snoopin’ around all the time! And what do you know about Luis?”
Holy crap! They’re after him.
“I don’t know,” I try to say.
“What? Speak up!”
“I don’t know anything about Luis!”
“What are you doing coming around here, then, knocking on his door? Do you know where he is? What’s going on? And his mom? What do you know?”
“I don’t know anything,” I manage to say with my face still mostly in the ground. “We worked on this project for school. Then he quit showing up. That’s all I know. I’m coming around here because I’m worried about him.”
“Serious?”
“Yes!”
“Aw, dude … Tre, get off the man’s back.”
He starts helping me up and brushing the dirt off my coat.
Tre says, “We’re sorry, man. You just scared us, is all. Luis and his mom aren’t around. Nobody knows anything. We thought … See, we was trying to get your attention and you take off running like that.”
The guy that’s not Tre says, “Man, that’s some suspicious behavior! You got to work on that. Serious. All we’re thinking is you’re messed up in something bad and you know something about Luis. You okay? We didn’t hurt you, did we?”
“Naw. I’m fine.”
“We got mud all up on your coat. I will wash that mess up for you right now. Serious.”
They introduce themselves. Tre and Quintel. They tell me how long they’ve known Luis and his mom and how, along with Leticia, they organize the Viking Glen trick-or-treating and the block watch and all that kind of crap.
“We look out for each other around here,” Tre says. “So we been trying to figure out what’s going on with Luis and his mom. And worryin’. That’s why we overreacted on you. We straight?”
I feel like a complete racist dumbass for what I’d been thinking about them. For the reasons I ran. “Yeah, that’s fine. I’m sorry I ran away from you.”
“No problem. Come around here anytime, Sam. You should go meet old man Graves. Luis and his mom check in on him all the time, so he’s pretty worried.” Tre points up the stairs. “Apartment twenty-three.”
BANANA BREAD
I KNOCK.
There’s yelling.
“Hold on! Hold on! Don’t go away! Graves is coming! Not in the grave yet—ha-ha!”
It’s like the door is made of paper, I can hear him so well. The old man opens up. He’s little. He must weigh a hundred and ten pounds or something. He might be a hundred and ten years old, too. He has a bald head and a huge toothy smile. The sweet smell of banana bread smacks me in the face.
“Hey, friend, state your name. Speak up, now.”
“Sam Gregory. I’m a friend of Luis Cárdenas.”
“In that case, come on in!”
We shake hands. I can feel every bone, he’s so skinny.
I walk into the tiny cluttered apartment and see pictures of Jesus and Martin Luther King and all these leaders on the wall. The Kennedys, Rosa Parks, Cesar Chavez. There’s a bunch of other important-looking people I can’t name. And pictures of people who must be Graves’s family. There are newspapers everywhere and clippings on the fridge and coffee table.
“Where’s Luis?” Graves asks me.
“I was hoping you would know.”
“My daughter came into town and took me to the ocean for a few days. I just got back this morning. They tell me Luis and Leticia have been gone for a week. Not sure what’s going on there. I do know they’ll check in when they get back. They never let too long g
o by without a visit.”
A buzzer goes off.
“My bread! Can I interest you in some of my hot banana bread? It’s award-winning bread, son.”
“Sure.” I haven’t eaten all day. It takes him about a year to get into the kitchen and cut the bread.
He talks the whole time. Tells me about when he was in the hospital after breaking a hip. Leticia helped him use the facilities when he couldn’t get a nurse to answer the call. “She was visiting the hospital. Just walking by. Didn’t know me from Adam,” he says. Leticia realized he didn’t have any family around so she checked up on him every day while he was in there. “We been friends ever since,” he says. “I even pulled strings with the manager to help her get the apartment. We’re that way. Helping each other out.”
Graves pulls the knife out of the bread and tears off a sheet of foil.
“So you’re friends with Luis?” he asks.
“Yeah. We worked on this project together.”
“Real smart boy. He drops in and we talk about the state of the world. Mostly I do the talking. Sometimes he disagrees with me and I give him a piece of my mind.” Graves laughs. “We get into it but we fight fair. I give him some bread or my famous coconut cookies. He fetches my mail. Runs to the store for my eggs and coffee. Looks in on me every couple days.”
“I haven’t seen him for over a week. I’m looking for him, though. I think I better get going, Mr. Graves.”
“Not without your bread.” He carefully wraps the big hunk of bread, folding the foil into hospital corners. He hands me the piping-hot package and a smaller piece wrapped in a paper towel.
“There’s one for the road.”
“Thanks, Mr. Graves. You need anything?”
“No, son. I’m fine.”
“All right.”
I start to head out but he says, “Wait. I take that back. I’m not fine until I know what’s going on with Luis and Leticia. So what I need is for you to keep on searching. And call me if you find out anything.”
“Will do. What’s your number?” Again with the cell phone. I type in Graves and add him to my contacts.
He pats my shoulder and says, “See you again, son.” He says it like he really wants to.
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