Barely Missing Everything

by Matt Mendez

  • • •

  And now, sitting in the recruiting office, he felt that exact dazed feeling. And even though what had happened wasn’t exactly the same as being twisted up in a metal box, the confused feeling—his head tingling like all the blood had rushed out and pooled at the bottoms of his feet, his urge to flee the scene—was. Alma had driven off and texted him seconds later:

  GROW UP!!!!!!

  Technical Sergeant Bullard’s office, the name stencilled on the glass door, was plastered with some nerdy shit. Posters with fighter jets zooming through clouds, words like INSPIRATION and DETERMINATION printed in bold underneath. JD walked the seemingly empty office, the cheap furniture and carpet as unimpressive as the images of smiling airmen marshaling airplanes and holding M16s. The posters of groups of mechanics looking into the camera while standing beside bombs or surrounded by tools in maintenance bays all seemed to have a white guy, a black dude, and some brown person of unknown ethnicity. The vatos could’ve been Indian, Native American, Latino, or Muslim. It was the air force’s way of saying, Hey, Brown Dudes, this shit’s for everyone. Behind Bullard’s desk were plaques, laminated newspaper articles, and neatly folded American flags inside triangular wooden frames. JD stood behind the recruiter’s desk, reading. Curious. Three different citations were for service in wars, the dates spanning JD’s entire life.

  “Sorry about that.” The voice obviously belonged to the recruiter and was friendly, but it made JD nervous anyway. JD quickly moved from behind the desk. The man was dressed in his blues, the stripes on his sleeves creased neatly down the middle. He wore a perfectly tied blue tie. “I was in the latrine. I’m Technical Sergeant Bullard.”

  “JD . . . and I’m sorry for being back there,” JD said, not knowing what else to say.

  “That’s okay, JD. You looking to join the greatest air force in the world?” Bullard folded his arms across his chest and smiled like an overeager fitness instructor.

  “Not really,” JD said. “I was just leaving.”

  “Why so fast? Did I scare you?” Bullard walked to a chair by the front door and sat down. “Because if it’s not me scaring you, it’s something. You look freaked out, dude.”

  JD couldn’t help but look out the window at his broken-down Escort. How was he getting home? No way would Danny come for him again. Alma was also out. The bus?

  Bullard eyed the parking lot. “That yours? I bet that has a story.” He pointed right at JD’s hooptie. Lucky guess.

  “You don’t wanna know.”

  “Probably a fun night that ended not so fun. You’re not the first person that’s happened to.” Bullard turned his attention from the car to JD. “You worried about it?”

  “No shit,” JD said.

  “You want something to drink? There is a mini-fridge by my desk.” Bullard nodded right where JD had just been standing. JD was thirsty and tired. He reached for a soda and took a seat next to Bullard.

  “How extreme,” JD said, holding a can of Mountain Dew.

  Bullard raised an eyebrow. “Are you making fun of a free soda?”

  “Sorry,” JD said, immediately feeling bad. Damn. “I’m sure this comes in handy when you recruit bros.” He took a drink. The fizzy sugar water was fantastic.

  “Gamers like it too.” Bullard smiled. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “I guess.” Here it came. The pitch.

  “Are the police involved?”

  “No.” JD avoided looking at the recruiter, who was trying his hardest to make eye contact. “It was just me and the post. Nobody really even knows about it.”

  “Were you drunk?”

  “Yes.” Honest. Why not?

  “So, what are you going to do about it?” Bullard leaned back in his chair, wanting an answer JD wasn’t sure he had. “You have an obvious problem with that junked-out car. You have to do something about it. Tell me your plan.”

  “I don’t know. Fix it?”

  “That would be way too expensive. You can’t really afford that. What’s your next plan?” Bullard jumped from his seat and skipped over to his desk, then spun around and faced JD. “Go! Tell me!”

  “Just leave it?” JD slumped down in his seat, now sure he didn’t have the answers.

  “Terrible idea. Eventually someone would report the car abandoned. You would get cited, multiple times. Then the car would get towed and you’d end up in court owing thousands of dollars for a car worth nothing. What’s option three? Go!”

  “What’s the point of this?” JD suddenly wanted to go home. He wished he’d gotten in the car with Alma and hadn’t talked crazy to her. Why did he always do that?

  “The point is when people like you walk into this office they think they’re looking for a job or college money, but what they need is problem-solving skills. The air force can teach you that, kid. Trust me. I’ve been in some tight spots.”

  Bullard leaned on his desk. He was muscular, his hair cropped short and perfectly combed, his chest stacked with medals. He seemed like a movie star. If Bullard had been their basketball coach, they might have won two, maybe three games, just on style alone.

  “So what would you do?” JD thought about the camera he left plugged in to his computer, downloading all the footage he’d captured so far. Was he crazy to think he should’ve been filming this moment?

  “Have it towed to a junkyard.” What? Yes, definitely out of his mind.

  “That’s it?”

  “Listen. If you have it towed to a junkyard, you can sell it to them for whatever they want to pay, and then the problem is solved. You didn’t throw good money away, you didn’t ignore the problem—making it worse—and you got a tiny bit to start over with. Isn’t better problem-solving a skill you should have?”

  “I can learn to think like that in the air force?”

  “If you’re smart, and you seem like you might be.”

  JD pulled out his phone, swiped at the screen. “So, what about jobs? I want to be a filmmaker. Is that an air force job? Maybe go to college.”

  “The air force has its own production team. We make our own promotion material and have access to the best equipment next to Hollywood. And, of course, there is the GI Bill for college. Plus all sorts of other benefits. But why talk about any of that right now? You look tired. How about I give you a ride home?”

  JD knew full well that accepting the offer meant he would owe the recruiter. That Bullard would start calling and looking for him at school. JD had never seen Bullard before, but he noticed other recruiters trolling the cafeteria and popping up on career day. Looking for suckers.

  “All right. But I’m not joining.”

  “Take my card. You may want to call me one day.”

  JD decided the dude wasn’t that bad and took it. To be nice.

  • • •

  Later that night, when Tomásito was asleep, JD watched the footage as quietly as he could. He went over the images he shot: random moments of Juan and Danny talking, flashes of neighborhood houses and cars, lots of sky and clouds. The sound of a gunshot and the inside of his jacket pocket, the muffled conversation between him and Pops—all of the audio was terrible and unlistenable. JD realized his footage could be better edited into a nightmare than a documentary. He needed to learn the basics of filmmaking, because none of the important things that had been happening had made it onto film. He was missing everything; even his family footage was terrible.

  He felt bad for what he’d said to Alma, for still avoiding Amá, and for being a bully to his brother. JD loved his family, but he could feel himself fading away from all of them—not just Amá. They would give him the boot, just like Pops, if they knew what he really thought and felt, if they spent time in his head. He was sure of it. He was about to text Juan and tell him about his car, but Juan had been on a self-imposed lockdown, studying nonstop for his basic-as-hell algebra test. The dude was freaking out over nothing, even getting Danny’s prima to agree to come tutor him.

  It was time for JD to do the s
ame. JD grabbed his phone and began searching for a way to be a better filmmaker, a better anything, when a new idea suddenly bloomed in his head. One that would help him and also keep his promise to Juan.

  Documentary Filmmaking

  Documentary Filmmaking tips

  Documentary Filmmaking techniques

  Documentary Filmmaking courses

  Documentary Filmmaking equipment

  Documentary Filmmaking workshops

  Documentary Filmmaking schools

  Death Row

  Death Row records

  Death Row inmates

  Death Row last meals

  Death Row records shirt

  Death Row stories

  Death Row last words

  BASIC ALGEBRA

  Identity is an equality relation, x = y, meaning x and y contain some variables and x and y yield the same values regardless of what values are substituted for those variables. Or x = y is an identity if x and y express the same functions.

  It’s Saturday afternoon and Roxanne is over to study, like she promised. You’ve been working on algebra for an entire week now, studying like crazy on your own while rehabbing your ankle, knowing you gotta focus. Má and Grampá are pissed at you. They don’t say shit, but you can tell, getting side-eye from both of them.

  You’ve taken Roxanne to your new room. She smells good, wearing a light perfume that’s making you dizzy. You’re both sitting on your bed, along with your algebra book, notebook, backpack, and Danny’s graphing calculator. She’s hugging your pillow. Your má has been in her room with the door closed all day. You thought about studying in the kitchen, to keep her from getting more pissed, but Grampá was in there rebuilding a carburetor. You’re glad Roxanne never saw the inside of your old apartment and wish she never knew you lived there.

  Roxanne starts with what she calls the basics, and explains that information about arithmetic operations on fractions can be extrapolated to all real numbers. She tells you to pretend that x will always be rational, that you could be sure the result would be valid for all numbers x. She takes your pencil and scribbles across the open notebook.

  Identities, she explains, are symbolic expressions that are true for all real numbers.

  (x – y)(x + y) = x2 – y2

  Roxanne is way too smart for you. That’s on top of being too pretty. Too badass. She tells you that factoring is the decomposition of a mathematical object, reducing something to its most basic terms. You think of numbers dying—all the points and rebounds, all the assists and steals you hustled for, marked down in pencil inside green score books, slowly fading away. Roxanne keeps writing.

  10x2 + 51x – 180 = (2x + 15)(5x – 12)

  She looks at you and smiles. “See.” She’s factoring now.

  As Roxanne effortlessly writes symbols and expressions, you smile back at her, showing your crooked teeth that shame the shit out of you, and realize this is another thing that is out of your reach. You feel like Eddie, who will never really get basketball; like JD, who can’t feel God. That you are an x and your friends are y’s, all three of you different variables but equally fucked.

  “Are you following this?” Roxanne puts the pencil down. “Am I going too fast?”

  “Nah,” you say, answering her first question. “And x can be anything I want, any number?” You can’t help but think if x can be anything, then why does it matter what x even is? X is completely meaningless.

  “Just not anything irrational, like pi. . . . See, you’re getting it.”

  You need to know enough to pass Mrs. Hill’s test, but you’re stupid and there’s no helping that. You inch closer to Roxanne, your leg touching hers.

  Roxanne is still smiling, but she puts the notebook on her lap, reaches for your algebra book, and playfully slaps it across your chest. “Look, you’re kinda cute, but we gotta keep working. We have a lot to cover.”

  “I’m sorry,” you say. “My bad.” You inch back, respecting her space but realizing you would gladly fail every math test for the chance to put your lips on hers, because you’re irrational, in fact borderline fucking ridiculous, just like π.

  LONG LIVE THE QUEEN

  (CHAPTER ELEVEN)

  It took a few days before Juan felt comfortable with the idea of taking Fabi’s old room, she could tell; usually he took the couch during visits. It looked nothing like it had when Fabi shared it with Gladi. The fluorescent stars Gladi had glued to the ceiling had long been scraped off, and the walls were painted, the bright pink now a clean white. The Strawberry Shortcake curtains were replaced with a set of blinds, and the cheap, blue shag carpet was now a rough brown Berber. Fabi barely recognized the room, which she was glad for. In fact the entire house seemed new. How hadn’t she noticed, over the years of dropping Juan off, that her father had slowly redone the entire home? She peeked into her father’s bedroom. It could be part vintage barbershop, part army museum. He slept on a neatly made twin bed tucked away in the corner of the room. A recliner sat in the middle before a coffee table littered with magazines and newspapers. The walls were peppered with awards and decorations from his time in the army; yellowed newspaper articles from the Vietnam War, where he did two tours, were framed and hung. In the opposite corner of the room was the mannequin. She remembered how Mamá used to call him Manny the mannequin; he was still dressed in her father’s old greens—olive drab pants and shirt, web belt and canteen, jungle boots and the piss-pot helmet that had a dent where her father claimed a bullet had hit and knocked him clean out. He’d woken in a MASH unit and was later discharged on a medical. Except for Manny, there was no trace of Mamá anywhere in the room.

  Fabi took the old sewing room. The room was really a bedroom, but never got used for that—though it never really got used for sewing, either. Sewing was something her mamá had always said she wanted to do but never did much of, the expensive Singer that Papá bought a forever trump card he played whenever she wanted something new for the house or herself.

  We could use a new stove. The legs are broken. My cakes keep coming out lopsided.

  Try making cakes with that sewing machine you made me buy. It cost enough money; it should be able to make cakes.

  We need a new washer. It won’t spin.

  No pues. Just make us new clothes with the Singer.

  The sewing room was where her mamá spent her last months, the room becoming a makeshift hospice. Where she died. Now it was a tidy bedroom with a queen bed, two end tables, and a sewing table at the opposite end, the Singer mounted inside the heavy wooden table and loaded with thread, ready to go if only someone would turn it on. Fabi wondered if her father had made the room nice for her. He’d always been better with his hands than with words.

  Now leaving for work, Fabi rushed down the hallway but stopped short when she heard laughter coming from Juan’s bedroom. That was weird. Curious, she slowly opened the door and peeked inside. A girl was sitting on the bed beside him, a book on her lap. She wasn’t doing anything wrong, other than laughing, but the sight of her next to her son filled Fabi with panic. She could hear her father: My house, my rules. Fabi hadn’t made her list of places to move yet. Had no money saved up. No plan. Juan froze when he saw her. He’d never had a girl over before, at least not that she knew of.

  “So, what’s going on in here?” Fabi asked, trying to sound like she wasn’t there to bust them, though maybe she was.

  “Nothing, just studying,” Juan said, moving away from the girl. “I gotta pass a math test next week or I’m off the team.”

  “What? You don’t expect me to buy that.” Wow. Fabi couldn’t believe how much she sounded like her father. She recognized Juan’s friend, the same one with the new car. Were her and Juanito a thing?

  “C’mon, Má. You don’t act all weird when my other friends are here. You’re embarrassing me.”

  He was right, of course. The poor girl looked like she wanted to vanish, pulling her knees to her chest and hugging them. Fabi instantly regretted shaming the girl again.
Regretted the way she treated her and Juan at the mailbox the other day.

  “Why didn’t you ask me for help?” Fabi had struggled in high school too. Though, like her father, her trouble was in English, with words. “I’m not stupid, you know?”

  “Well, I am, má. I am stupid,” Juan said. “And if I don’t pass this test next week, like I said, I’m gonna get kicked off the basketball team.”

  “You’re not stupid,” Fabi said, wanting to rush to her son. To hold him like she did when he was little, when him being scared meant needing her.

  “I’m Roxanne,” the girl said, standing up. Good manners, Fabi thought, relaxing a bit. “Juan invited me over. I’m sorry to cause all this trouble, and I’m sorry I drove off the other day without introducing myself.”

  “That’s okay, Roxanne,” Fabi said. “Juan caused the trouble. He’s the one who never tells me what’s going on.” She leaned over and extended her hand, her armful of bangles jingling. She was aware of how short her skirt was, how low-cut her tank top was. Even though she pretty much ran the bar, she still needed to waitress; without tips she made shit. “And would you two please study in the kitchen? There is a no-boys-and-girls-alone-in-the-bedroom rule in this house.”

  “Since when?” Juan said, looking up at Fabi.

  “Since you,” Fabi said. “And it’s taken Grampá almost eighteen years to get over it.”

  • • •

  With Juan and Roxanne safely in the kitchen, Fabi jumped in her truck. She pulled the pistol from her purse. She wasn’t about to break her father’s rules either, so she’d decided she would sell the stupid thing or give it away—maybe back to a pawnshop? Until then, she’d stash it under the driver’s seat, so if Papá did another room check, he’d find zip.

  The .22 fit perfectly into the groove behind the lever that moved the seat back and forth, making her wonder if that was the intent of the space, if every truck had a space ready for a gun, and if most of the trucks on the road already had them nestled inside and she had no idea. Crazy. Maybe she would ask Ruben. Ruben. Man oh man oh man. She had to decide when to tell Ruben about being pregnant. Even with everything going on with Juan, she kept thinking about it. Honestly, almost everything reminded her. TV commercials with families who, for some reason, did laundry together. Her unpaid stack of bills. Juan. She dug through her purse and pulled out the sonogram. It had been almost two weeks since her visit to Project Vida.