by Sara Alva
I twisted away. “Nah, man. I’m cool. Lemme just sell this and go—I gotta go buy me some shoes.”
Andre shrugged, pulling out a wad of cash from his pocket. “Suit yourself. But you’re probably gonna have to make a decision about where your loyalties lie pretty damn soon. You ain’t no baby no more. You sell to the wrong person…you could get yourself in real trouble, man.”
We finished our transaction and said our goodbyes—possibly for the last time. There was no way I was joining a gang in these parts—and not for the reasons everyone thought. I wasn’t too good for it, and I wasn’t chicken…but I also wasn’t stupid.
A gang in the ghetto wasn’t no place for someone like me.
~*~
That night I shoved my new shoes into the bottom of my backpack before climbing into bed. I lay awake for about thirty minutes, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about the homework I hadn’t done. Eventually I crawled out from the blankets and grabbed my shoes again, so I could pull them into the bed with me. They were shiny and white, and in the light of the street lamps streaming through my window they nearly glowed.
Mimi told me it was dumb to always buy white shoes, but she just didn’t understand. Yeah, they got dirty faster, but there were those few glorious days where they were the brightest things I owned, and everybody who looked at me would know I’d just bought something new. You couldn’t really get that effect with the more practical black shoes.
It was stupid, but I kept the sneakers next to me in the bed. I wrapped my arms around them like they were some kind of teddy bear, stroking the material between my thumb and forefinger until I fell asleep.
~*~
I awoke to a hand pressed over my mouth.
“Don’t make a sound, pendejo.”
Hector’s speech was slurred, but he had a firm grip on my face, causing my lips to press painfully into my teeth.
In his other hand, he held my shoes.
“This what you buy after you steal from me, you little shit? This fucking shit?”
I tried to speak, but Hector tightened his hand, digging a nail into my cheek.
“You too fucking pussy to be a real man, so you think you can just take what you want, eh? Well you’re wrong, little maricón. You never gonna take from me again.”
He grabbed his lighter out of his pocket, releasing my mouth to do so.
“No, Hector, please!” Tears sprung to my eyes, not from the pain so much as the humiliation. It’d been stupid to think I could get away with taking so much from him…but I had needed those shoes!
And now they were about to go up in flames.
He lit the canvas and tossed them in my trash bin, where the crumpled wads of paper soon caught fire.
I knew it was a lost cause, but I jumped up from my bed anyway. “Hector, no!”
His hand flew across my mouth and I dropped to the floor, stunned, my lower lip stinging.
“Please,” I begged. “I need them for school.”
The tears escaping now, I crawled over to the trashcan as if there was something I could do to stop my shoes from becoming a pile of ashes.
“Cry all you want, pussy. Your mama’s good and drunk and fucked to sleep.”
A flame shot up over the rim of the can, licking at my face, and the heat ignited my fury. I charged to my feet and tried to ram Hector’s body with everything I had in my five-foot-eight frame.
But through the anger and the tears, I wasn’t thinking properly, and I just ended up in his grasp again. Except this time, he locked onto my wrist and flicked on his lighter, holding my arm against the flame.
I screamed and tried to pull away but he had me pinned, and it wasn’t until spots of pain blocked my vision that he let me go.
I crumpled to the dirty hardwood, too exhausted to cry any more.
“Don’t you forget,” Hector said, and walked out.
Chapter 2: Up to No Good
I lay in a heap for a while, watching the fire. The flames danced with such energy, in complete control of their small world. I felt a bit like a fire sometimes…storming through life like I had shit all figured, when really any asshole could come along and put me out.
I managed to gather myself off the floor, ignoring the pain long enough to grab an old towel and smother the fire to death. When the room was dark again, I waited for my eyesight to adjust before examining my injury. The skin of my wrist was red and raw, and it was blistering slightly.
Staggering footsteps led me to the kitchen, where I took a bag of French fries out of the freezer. I held my breath, counted to five, and gingerly placed it on my arm.
A second later, I dropped the bag on the floor, intense pain rocketing through me and making me hiss out several half-formed curses. I shoved my good arm in my mouth to muffle the rest of what I wanted to scream. The last thing I needed was another confrontation with Hector.
Leaving the damn fries lying on the ground, I rifled through a kitchen drawer to find some aspirin. Then I dragged out a bottle of tequila and used it to knock back four pills, hoping the shot would make me woozy enough to fall asleep despite the pain.
I took the bottle back to bed with me, just in case I needed a little more help.
~*~
“Alejandro!”
My mother stood at my bedroom door in her glittery pink tank top and jean mini-skirt, a hand on her narrow hip. “What are you doing? Get your ass up and go to school!”
I tried to move and flinched when my arm touched the blanket. “Mami, I don’t feel so good. Can’t you call and say I’m sick?”
“You better get your ass up and go. Hector and I are going out of town for a few days. I don’t have time to deal with you.”
She stepped away then, leaving me to my pounding headache and fucked-up wrist.
When she and Hector had driven off, I got up and carefully dressed. My wrist had patchy, peeling red spots of skin from the burns, and I knew I’d have to cover it up before I left the house.
Feet shoved in flip-flops, I dug through the bathroom and the hallway closet in search of gauze. I didn’t really think we’d have any, unless Mimi had bought it for some reason. My first instinct was right, however. We were not a first-aid-prepared household.
In the end, I grabbed some toilet paper and wrapped it loosely around my wrist. I taped it down and decided it looked close enough to a bandage. As close as I could get, anyhow.
José was waiting for me a block away from the school.
“Flip-flops?” He pointed a stubby finger at my feet, taunting me with his laughter. “Ooh, you gonna get in trouble.”
“Fuck off,” I grumbled. Obviously, I was in no mood for his stupidity.
He stopped. He could hear the tone in my voice, and he knew I’d back it up with a fist if I had to.
“What’s the matter? Hector beating up on you again? Your lip looks a little fat. And what the fuck is that on your arm?”
I shot out the tip of my tongue, passing it over my lip and feeling the small cut there. “He’s being a fucking asshole, but thank God he and my mom left town today. Probably going to Vegas or something.”
“You have the house to yourself?” José’s eyes lit up. “Fuck yeah, man! Let’s have a party!”
I still had a headache, and the idea of loud noise and drunken partygoers making a mess of Hector’s place didn’t sound all that tempting.
“I dunno, man. I’m not sure when they gonna be back.”
“We have to, Alex! I have some beer…you can take some of Hector’s weed…”
My wrist throbbed.
“Nah, man. I can’t do that no more.”
“Fine.” He rolled his eyes. “Then we get someone else to bring some. We can do it tonight…they ain’t gonna be back in one day.”
“But I can’t cut class. The PSA counselor said she’s gonna turn my mom in to the DA if I keep cutting. She’ll kill me.”
“Okay, so we end it early and go to school the next day. It’ll be Friday—we can make it through
one Friday with a little hangover, can’t we?”
José blinked at me hopefully, his smile pushing out those round cheeks of his. As annoying as he was sometimes, it was hard not to like him…the way you liked an ugly stray dog that came around begging for scraps.
“Fine. But you better stay and help me clean up so I don’t catch shit.”
If he had been a dog, he’d have been wagging his tail and jumping up and down with excitement when I finally gave in.
~*~
Blanca draped herself on me, purring into my ear. “You sexy, Alex, you know that?”
“Mhm,” I replied absentmindedly. I’d been told I was fairly good-looking by several girls, so I had no reason to doubt her.
Music blared and smoke filled the house. With the lights dimmed and all the smiling people moving about, it almost didn’t look like the shithole it was. Of course, the main reason it was such a shithole was because of Hector’s parties—some asshole or another was always getting a little too high and breaking a chunk of wall or a piece of furniture.
Someone on my left passed me a blunt, and I took it gratefully.
“What’s on your arm?” Blanca’s tiny fingers danced along my chest, making their way toward the bandage. “You been wearing that all day.”
“Nothing.” I tried to shoo her away, but she persisted.
“You got jacked up by your stepdad again?”
Bitch.
“He ain’t married to my mom, and you know that. He ain’t never gonna marry her.”
At least, not if I had anything to say about it.
Blanca stuck out her lower lip, tilting her head in a way she probably thought made her look cute. “Sorry, baby.” Her hands kept rubbing my chest. “But why you let him beat up on you like that?”
“Shit, I didn’t let him do nothing.” I glared at her. “I popped him right in the face. If he didn’t have that damn lighter, I woulda fucking messed him up.”
She wiggled even further into my lap, and suddenly her lips were moving against my ear. “I know it, papi.”
I jerked in my seat to stop her breath from tickling me. “Blanquita, you making my leg fall asleep. Can you move?”
Her nose curled up. “But Alex—”
Careful to keep my injured arm away from her, I stood, and she slid right to the floor. “You heavy, and I gotta take a leak.”
“I am not heavy, pendejo!” she called after me as I stumbled down the hallway. “You’d best come back and let me sit on you to prove it!”
She probably weighed eighty pounds when wet, but I had no intention of letting her lay her grabby hands on me all night. José was right when he’d said she was a total slut-in-training—anyone could see it.
I found a ragged patch of grass and weeds in the corner of the backyard to finish off the blunt, away from all the cramped bodies. I needed the time alone to process the mess of feelings—the general happiness that so far, my life was still normal…and the growing fear that it was getting just a little bit harder to maintain every day.
Diego strode over to invade my solitude, and again, my emotions were split. I minded…but I didn’t, really.
“Yo.” His long, thin fingers tapped his cigarette. Ash fell to the ground, almost touching my bare toes. “What up, Alex?”
I instantly zoned in on his hands, unable to tear my eyes away. Weed did that to me, sometimes…made tiny things seem like they were the most interesting objects in all the world.
And Diego just happened to have really nice fingers.
I passed him the blunt—I’d obviously had enough—and our hands touched for just a moment.
ABCDEFG, HIJKLMN…
I screamed the alphabet in my head to keep my thoughts in check. It was an old trick, and not my best, but I wasn’t at my smartest when high.
“You know, I saw Franky today. He wanted to talk to you,” Diego said.
I stopped the alphabet. “Franky? Why?”
“Why do you think, cabrón? He knows you deal…you lucky he hasn’t told nobody else yet. You lucky I haven’t told nobody else yet. What the hell you fucking around for? Why the hell don’t you want to get jumped in?”
Again with the fucking gang. My thoughts on Diego’s fingers quickly faded into the background, and even high I knew this problem was only going to grow.
“Listen,” Diego continued. “I might be able to talk to someone about getting you in. Not José, though. Don’t tell that little fool.”
I shrugged awkwardly—first one shoulder, then the other. Hopefully Diego would blame that on me being drunk and not me being so nervous I could feel my heartbeat in my throat. “I’m fine with what I got goin’ on right now.”
Diego rolled his eyes. “What you so scared of, man? They ain’t gonna break your bones or nothing. You just cover your face, it’s over in a few minutes, and you can be the fucking boss of this shit place.”
He fake-jabbed at me, and I ducked. “Yeah…’cause I always wanted to be the boss of a shit place.”
“Man, it’s gotta be better than that dime shit you doin’ by yourself.”
I shook my head. “Nah, I’m not doing that no more.”
“Why not?
“Uh, I…”
Fuck, he had me against a wall. I couldn’t tell him it was because of lack of supply—he’d have an obvious solution to that problem.
Diego inhaled from his cigarette, his long fingers twitching. “You either a fucking coward, or you think you better than us…which would be pretty fucking stupid, considering you a bastard kid living off your mama’s deadbeat boyfriend.”
My stomach twisted, dark thoughts flooding my head. And not the kind of thoughts I could keep back by screaming the alphabet. How long could I put it off? How long could I hold on to this life before I became the outcast, or the enemy?
Andre was right. I wasn’t a kid anymore. I’d have to make a decision soon, but either way I had the sinking feeling I was damned.
“I gotta go back in. Blanca’s waiting for me, man. I think I’m gonna get some tonight.”
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
~*~
Blanca rolled over, her skinny arm slapping my wrist and making me cringe. I needed to blink several times to get the room into focus, but once I had, I immediately wanted to shut my eyes again.
Beer cans lined the floor of my bedroom, along with cigarette butts and general filth. And, of course, there was a naked girl in my bed, which really just completed the whole fucked-up picture.
“Blanca.” I nudged her. “Wake up.”
The early-morning light streamed through my window, lighting up the dust and dirt particles in the air.
“Blanca, wake up. We gotta go to school.”
She yawned delicately. “Mmm, why don’t we just stay here? I hate school.”
I made a frantic scan of the room and sighed in relief when I found the tied-off condom on the floor.
Blanca caught it and giggled. “You didn’t think I was that drunk, did you? No way I’m letting you ruin this body.”
She kicked off the covers and stood, flouncing her hair and thrusting out her tiny hip.
If she’d had a bit less breast, she almost could’ve passed for a boy. A little boy.
But I wasn’t no pedophile.
“Get dressed and get moving.”
~*~
Diego wasn’t the only one with his head down on the desk in homeroom that morning. There were a few other people with bleary red eyes and greasy hair, as well as two empty seats. I’d downed a couple of aspirin before coming and replaced my makeshift toilet paper bandage with a paper towel one, figuring that would hold up a bit better to the daily wear and tear.
And it was Friday, after all. I only had one day left to survive until I could lock myself away for the weekend. With any luck, I’d be alone, too. I didn’t need my mom or Hector around to screw up my privacy…and the time I needed to do some serious, not-high thinking.
“Psst.” Diego waved a hand at
me. “Did you fuck Blanca?”
I grinned. At least there was a bright side to that—bragging rights, and a little taste of normalcy. Maybe continuing to sleep with girls would be the answer to all my problems. “Yeah, man. She’s a good lay.”
Not that I remembered much of it.
“I bet. Jeremy…he a junior…he said she a tight little thing.”
“Jeremy?” I frowned. “I thought Blanca was a virgin.”
Diego burst out laughing. “Blanca a virgin? Yeah right, idiota!”
“Diego and Alejandro!” Ms. Elridge snapped. “Come to the front right now!”
Aw, fuck.
I slid up toward her desk, trying to keep the thwack-thwack of my flip-flops as quiet as possible. Diego walked over with his hands in his pockets, never dropping his cool-persona for a moment. I couldn’t help but find his defiance impressive. And maybe a little attractive.
“A young lady’s virginity is not open for discussion in this school at any time, silent reading or otherwise.”
Her face was all pinched, making little lines appear on her lips.
“If I hear you discussing it again, you can go to the office and discuss it with the principal.”
“Yes, Ms. Elridge,” we said in near-unison, then shuffled back to our seats. Diego didn’t look my way for the rest of the period.
Not really a good start to the morning…I should have known things would only go from bad to worse.
I tried to move a little faster to get out of the room when the bell sounded, since Ms. Elridge was already pissed at me. But one of my flip-flops ended up flopping right off my foot, and I stumbled like a fool, getting a laugh from more than a few classmates. They sobered quickly, though, when Ms. Elridge zeroed in on me.
