Jumped In

by Patrick Flores-Scott

  “Is it okay for people to see him?”

  “I’m not sure if they’re accepting visitors. It’s very serious, Luis’s condition. You understand this, right?”

  “I gotta go.”

  I realize I’m still holding the zucchini bread.

  “Here. This is from Mr. Graves.”

  “Sam, you’re a good friend,” she calls as I bolt down the hall.

  SPILLING MY GUTS

  I’M SO PISSED AT MYSELF.

  Pissed for having been angry with Luis. Pissed at myself for thinking the worst about him. I can’t get the image of his scar out of my head. Not just the scar, but all the crap I imagined about it.

  I hate myself for the time I spent thinking those things.

  Mostly I’m upset that my first friend in a long time is so sick that he might die.

  Couldn’t he have warned me? Couldn’t he have said, Don’t get too close and please don’t care about me because I might not be around for long?

  And are we even friends? Really? Why should I feel all these things about someone I barely know? Should I even go to Children’s Hospital? Would I just be in the way?

  I decide I need to tell Luis thanks. I wanna let him know that saying that poem in front of the class made things different for me. It made it better. And if I can’t talk to him, I’ll tell his mom.

  I wait for the bus.

  It takes forever.

  I’m freezing. When you live around here, you know about the cold layer of wet that gets in beneath your clothes—beneath your skin—and wraps you in a chill that you can’t get rid of because no matter where you go or how much clothing you put on, you’re wet.

  I finally get on the Metro. It takes me down Pac Highway. When I get close to the spot where Luis dropped me off that night, I swear I can see him up ahead, jumping up and down. Yelling at me with that smile. Making the circle like an idiot.

  I make the circle in the steam on the bus window then pull the window down and squeeze through so I’m half hanging out of the bus. As we pass the spot, I wave at him and yell, “Three-sixty, Luis! Three-sixty!”

  I climb back in and the driver asks me if I’m okay.

  I tell him I feel a little better.

  The bus drops me off.

  I head down the hill and walk in the door, shaking, soaked from head to toe.

  Ginny and Bill are freaked out. They wanna know what’s going on.

  Through chattering teeth, I tell them the whole story.

  I come clean about the fact that I’ve been a complete slacker at school.

  I tell them how Luis moved into my classes and that everyone, including me, was scared of him and thought he was a gangster. I tell them what Carlos said about Luis and his family. I tell them what Mr. McClean thought about Luis and about me.

  I tell them how much I’d hated Cassidy for calling us Luisandsam and for getting after us all the time. I tell them about the slam poetry assignment and how it was Luis’s idea to do it and about how hard he pushed me and about how hard we worked on it.

  I tell them about the fight at school. How I assumed that Luis was a part of it and how that made me just as bad as everyone else. I tell them how mad I was at Luis when he didn’t show up for the slam.

  I tell them about the coffee and Luis’s CD and about how it felt to hear my voice echoing off Ms. Cassidy’s classroom walls. I tell them how I cried when it was over. I tell them how Cassidy cried too, and about how bad I wanted them and my mom to know what I’d done … and mostly how I wanted to tell Luis and to thank him.

  I thank Ginny and Bill for the pizza and ice cream for my birthday.

  I tell them how I’ve been trying to find Luis, searching with Julisa and Rupe and Carlos, and I tell them about what Mrs. Peña and Mr. Graves had to say. I tell them about the banana bread.

  I tell them about Leyla and that she said Luis had to finish schoolwork before he’d let his mom take him to the hospital. I figured that was when Luis recorded the poem and wrote me the note. And I tell them that tomorrow I’m going to Children’s Hospital to see him.

  Bill leaves the room.

  Ginny puts her hand on my shoulder. “Go now, Sam.” She hustles into the kitchen.

  Bill comes back with his car keys and his coat on. He holds a dry jacket by the shoulders for me to slip into. We head for the door and Ginny hollers for us to wait a second.

  She comes out of the kitchen with a thermos of coffee, puts it in my hands and scoots us out the door.

  NO WORDS

  BILL HITS THE GAS PEDAL HARD AND WE’RE OFF TO CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL.

  I blast the heat. It doesn’t help.

  That layer of damp has taken hold and it isn’t going anywhere.

  We don’t say a word the whole way. No sound but the pounding rain and the squeal of wipers bouncing back and forth.

  MY FRIEND

  WE ARRIVE AT CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL and follow the choo-choo train mural down a long hall to the elevator and up to the sixth floor, and we end up in a waiting room with puffy white cloth clouds billowing down from the ceiling.

  Leyla said Luis was in room 634.

  We get there, and the bed is empty.

  No one’s in the room.

  A nurse comes by. I ask her about Luis, but she says she’s just started her shift. I walk into room 635 and see a little girl, hooked up to all these tubes and monitors and stuff. She’s sitting up, eating. Her mom is feeding her some orange Jell-O, and her dad is reading the newspaper.

  I probably shouldn’t bug them, but I can’t help it. I wanna know what’s going on. “Do you know anything about Luis, the kid who was in the next room?”

  The parents’ eyes get wide. They look at me like they wanna say something, but they just can’t.

  My grandpa puts his hand on my shoulder.

  The little girl says, “Luis is up in heaven. He was my friend.”

  The mom has a tear running down her face. She doesn’t wipe it away. Just lets it roll.

  The dad hides behind his paper.

  I look back at my grandpa and he’s biting his lip.

  The little girl closes her eyes.

  I just wanna scream and break stuff, but I’m stuck frozen in rain-soaked clothes.

  “Come on, Sam.” My grandpa walks me down the hall with the puffy white clouds, down the elevator and past the stupid train mural, out to the car.

  What do you do next?

  We drive home.

  Half an hour of windshield wipers back and forth.

  Sweesh-sweet.

  Sweesh-sweet.

  Concentrate on the wipers.

  Sweesh-sweet.

  Sweesh-sweet.

  I count each wiper squeak, hoping the numbers might fill all the space in my brain and keep me from thinking, keep me from feeling anything.

  It doesn’t work.

  As we get out of the car, my grandpa puts his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry about your friend, Sam.”

  I can’t say anything.

  I go to bed and stare at the shadows. I listen to the rain pound the roof and I shake with the wet cold that won’t leave me. I can’t believe this is really happening. I slam my fist into the wall and cry until the tears don’t come anymore.

  MORNING

  I KNOW I SHOULD GO SEE GRAVES.

  But I can’t.

  I won’t. There is no way I’m going to those apartments again.

  Luis is dead.

  I tried to make a friend. I tried and he’s dead.

  I go back and forth to his place, all over town looking for him. Worrying myself sick for days. And he doesn’t bother to tell me where he is? Doesn’t bother to mention the one little detail that he might die? Doesn’t even have his mom call?

  Is that what a friend would do?

  I’m never going to Graves’s place. I’m never going to school again. I’m never gonna get out of this bed.

  I pull the covers over my head and close my eyes as tight as I can. I try to get to that place
in my head where I don’t care … where nothing matters.

  I almost get there—

  “HELLO, SAM!”

  No! I’m sleeping!

  “HELLO, SAM!”

  Fucking bird.

  “HELLO, SAM! HELLO, SAM!”

  I press the ends of my tear-soaked pillow against my skull and into my ears as hard as I can.

  Nothing will drown out the sound of that stupid parrot.

  I try to pull myself up but moving my body is like hauling a laundry bag full of bricks. I fight against the weight and stand up.

  “HELLO, SAM! HELLO, SAM! HELLO, SAM!”

  I open my bedroom door. Gilbert is looking right at me.

  “HELLO, SAM!”

  I wanna hate him.

  I wanna sleep.

  I wanna give up on everything.

  I wanna forget about Luis and forget about Graves and anyone else who’s expecting anything from me.

  “HELLO, SAM!”

  But I can’t.

  I unlatch the door to the cage and reach my hand out for Gilbert.

  Shhhh. It’s okay. I take him to my chest and hold him there. I stroke his feathers. Feel his heart beating.

  I like you, Gilbert.

  I look up and see Ginny and Bill standing there. “Good morning, Sam.”

  “Hi.”

  We’re all quiet together for a minute.

  “I gotta get dressed and go see Mr. Graves.”

  Bill says, “Sam, I’m proud of you. You’re my boy. And I’m damn proud.” He and Ginny wrap their arms around me.

  We don’t say a word.

  We just stand there, together, holding each other like we never have before. Then Bill says, “Now you go do what you have to do, Sam.”

  OUT TO SEA

  I CALL JULISA. Give her the sad news. She sobs.

  I tell her, “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything, Sam.”

  “I’m going over to Luis’s.”

  “I’m coming too then.”

  “That’s good, Julisa. Thank you.”

  I wrap myself tight in my jacket and start up the hill to the Viking Glen Apartments. I’m just a few steps up when I reach for my pocket. It’s still in there. The letter to my mom.

  I look back down the hill at the house.

  I’ve always called it my grandparents’ house, but right now I have this overwhelming feeling that I belong in that little rambler and that Ginny and Bill are all the family I need.

  And that house is my home.

  This place is my home.

  I look down past it now. To Puget Sound. To Des Moines Marina. All the white boats moored up for the winter, bobbing in the midnight blue water.

  I head down there.

  I run.

  I sprint to the marina and pull that letter out of my pocket.

  I tear onto the dock—past a family packing up their sailboat, past a couple of old fishermen. I crunch that letter to my mom into a ball, sprint to the last board—

  And I launch that letter.

  I watch it fly … then drop into Puget Sound.

  It pops up to the surface like a bobber.

  The letter floats on waves, the tide pulling it farther and farther out.

  And everything in it … away.

  I take out my phone and hit the Contacts button. I punch in my grandparents’ number and type the letters h-o-m-e.

  LUIS’S STASH

  I HEAD UP THE HILL.

  Again.

  I’m all sweaty from running and this shirt—the only dress shirt I got—is way too small. I know I look like crap.

  I’m not ready to tell Graves.

  I’m not ready to face up to the fact that Luis isn’t coming back.

  I knock on his door. Graves is cooking again. He has on a starched white shirt and a bright blue silk tie.

  “Making some enchiladas for Leticia. She taught me, you know.”

  “You heard?”

  “Yeah. Cryin’ shame. I’ll break down later. For now, we got to be strong for Leticia.” He shakes his head. “I can’t imagine the pain she’s goin’ through. To lose your husband so young, and then your son … Sam, can you grab the plate of ham off the stove for me?”

  “Yeah. Where should I put it?”

  “We’re taking it downstairs.”

  Now stuff starts coming up in my chest. My head tightens all the way around.

  I’m going to see Leticia again.

  We walk down the stairs, Mr. Graves taking one slow, careful step at a time. I watch, making sure he doesn’t fall. We get down there and Graves tells me to knock. I knock and knock. Nobody answers.

  I’m used to it.

  “Maybe she’s not here,” I say.

  “Open the door, son.” It’s unlocked. He walks in.

  “Lunch, Leticia! Lunch patrol!”

  “Graves, get in here!” she shouts.

  “She’s in his room,” he says. “Come on.”

  We walk through the dining room. There are two empty root beer cans sitting on the table. Then down the hall. Luis’s door is open. Leticia is sitting on the floor clenching tear-soaked tissues, looking like hell. There are a couple journals and all kinds of paper scattered around her.

  She stands up holding a bunch of the papers in her hand.

  “Look … look!” Leticia has that crazy energy people get when they’ve been awake for way too long. She squeezes Graves about as tight as his little old man body can take.

  Then she looks at me with a sad, intense smile. “Sam.” Then her smile turns excited and she shows me the papers. “Did you know about this?”

  I look at a page.

  I grab more pages off the floor.

  They’re all poems typed on Luis’s old typewriter. It seems like there are a hundred of them. “We wrote a poem for school, but I thought that was his first one. I had no idea—”

  “Read this, Sam.”

  I start reading it silently.

  “Out loud? Please?” She sits down on the floor and closes her eyes. She clenches her tissues in one hand and holds a stack of poems against her chest. I read to her and to Mr. Graves.

  SECRET POET

  TEARS ARE FLOWING DOWN LETICIA’S CHEEKS.

  “He was a poet. My son was a poet.” She sounds amazed and surprised and sad all at the same time. “Why didn’t he ever tell me?”

  “It’s kids, Leticia. At his age they aren’t going to tell their mama a thing unless they got to. Isn’t that right, Sam?”

  “We wanna say stuff. But we can’t.”

  “Can you read another one?”

  “Sure.”

  “You have such a good voice, Sam.”

  There’s a knock at the door. It’s gotta be Julisa. This is all so heavy, I’m happy to go let her in. “Hey,” I mumble.

  “Hi, Sam.” She gives me a tight hug. I introduce her to everyone. It’s clear she’s doing everything she can to hold it together.

  She has some flowers in her hands. She gives them to Leticia and says, “Luis wrote this for me. I wanted to…”

  She can’t get any more words out so she shows Luis’s mom the poem he had written for her and had gotten up the nerve to actually give her, which explains a lot about why she’s here and why she was searching for Luis.

  Leticia asks her to read the poem out loud.

  I read another poem.

  Graves reads one.

  Leticia reads one. We keep on taking turns.

  Leyla shows up with more food and she starts reading poems too.

  As long as we’re reading, it feels like Luis is talking. And if Luis is talking, he’s still with us.

  So we keep on reading.

  Next Poems:

  -The way abuelita prays, eyes closed and smiling

  -All the stuff I wanted to say when Mr. Vaefale told us he had cancer

  -Mom’s time machines

  -Sam in hood = turtle in shell

  - Tre and Quintel, the gate
keepers of Viking Glen

  - How bad I want to barrel roll a jet over Lake Washington

  GOOD-BYE, MAN

  EVERYONE’S AT THE WAKE. Cassidy, Carter, Leyla, Mr. Graves, Mrs. Peña, Quintel, Tre, Julisa, Carlos. There are family members. I meet Luis’s grandma and his brother, Rubén.

  McClean is there. He shakes my hand when I come in. Doesn’t say anything. He just shakes my hand and pats my shoulder.

  Leticia asks me to read one of Luis’s poems for the service.

  I’m shaking standing at the podium, looking out at his friends and family.

  I close my eyes.

  I’m in Luis’s room again.

  He’s making the circle.

  Telling me to read it like I mean it.

  I GOT SOMETHING TO SAY

  IN LINE, HEADED TO SEE LUIS.

  It’s for real because this wake is open casket. People always say that like it’s a creepy thing. I don’t care. I never got to see Luis before he died and I wanna see him now.

  My legs get heavier the closer I get. I wanna see him. But I know this will be the last time.

  He’s in a gray suit. He looks good but I hate that he smells like chemicals.

  Standing there, I get this overwhelming need to touch Luis.

  I have to touch him.

  I look back and everyone in line is looking at the ground.

  So I take both my hands and rest them on Luis’s hands.

  I close my eyes and see pictures of us laughing together. Luis laughing at me. Smirking at me. Us drinking stupid root beer. Luis saying the poem like it was the most important thing.

  I hold my hands on his for a long time.

  Then I reach into my pocket and take out the reflection Julisa gave us the day of the slam. Luis really liked her. He needs something from her. He needs something from that day. From our moment in the sun. I put the paper in his jacket pocket.