Trouble Is... Read online

Chapter 4

  Freedom. Freedom and to hell with the world. That’s how I felt on the way to the beach the next day. To hell with Marco and Frank. Frank was in a white apron messing around with lettuce and carrots at Cambden’s supermarket. I was in the backseat of a Chevy on my way to the beach with the radio turned up loud, the wind blowing in my hair, and Maria on my lap. What did Frank or Marco or Wilkerson or any of them know about anything? Nothing. I never knew ditching could feel so good.

  Maria’s head was on my shoulder, her breath warm on my neck. That felt good, too. She had on a black tank top and a pink mini-skirt. I didn’t know where to put my hands. I knew where I wanted to put them, but I didn’t know where I could put them. I wrapped my arms around her waist so that I was holding her, but not really touching her where she might not want to be touched. She had one arm across my shoulders. With her other hand, she played with a little black cross around her neck. She told me everyone in Locos wore them. It was their sign.

  There were eight of us crammed in the car, all Locos 18 but me. I guess I was starting to look like Locos because Maria had taken her black Raiders baseball cap off her head and put it on mine after we’d dumped our backpacks into the trunk of Angel’s car in the school parking lot.

  Leonardo Blanco and his girlfriend were also in the backseat. They started making out as soon as we pulled away from the school. And older Locos, a guy I didn’t know, sat in the middle between Leonardo and his girl and me and Maria. Angel Olivares, his girlfriend Sandra, and her seventh-grade brother were in the front. Sandra’s brother kept flipping radio stations, cussing if he didn’t like the song, and turning it up real loud if he did.

  Angel and Sandra had made up, and she leaned against him like they’d never had a big fight and she’d never looked at Eddy. She was almost sitting in Angel’s lap. I didn’t care so long as he could keep one hand on the wheel and the car on the road. They smoked one cigarette between them, handing it back and forth. Marlboro without a filter. Someone told me once you could really get cancer with Marlboros. The smoke blew back in our faces because all the windows were open. I didn’t care. I wanted to breathe in that smoke. I was tired of being careful.

  Finally, about halfway to the beach, I got up my courage to lay my hand on Maria’s knee. She snuggled in closer to me and kissed my neck. I guess it was good we were with six other kids because all I could think about was IT. I’d never done IT, but right at that moment that’s all I wanted to do. I closed my eyes and thought about Maria and about IT and about how wished I’d found out about ditching a long time ago.

  When we got to the beach we sat on the sand for a while. Then Sandra’s brother took off his shoes and T-shirt and went in the water. Angel and Sandra went in next. Sandra had her bathing suit on under her shorts and shirt. Maria stood up and took off her pink skirt. The black tank top was really the top of her suit. I couldn’t believe how good she looked. I didn’t have a suit, so I took off my shoes, rolled them in my T-shirt and went in the ocean in my jeans. It was cold, but not after you got used to it. Mostly I splashed Maria and she splashed me. And we held hands and looked at the water crash in around our ankles. Angel and Leonardo went out to bodysurf, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay with Maria.

  After we got out of the water, we all lay on the sand to dry off. Maria and I spread our two small towels side-by-side and lay down on our stomachs. My legs stretched off the towel onto the sand. I dug my toes in and crossed my arms under my head. My jeans clung to me like cold, clammy skin. Sand scratched on the inside of the legs. The sun shone down on our backs, but it was still early enough in the day to be chilly. I shivered. Goosebumps popped out all up and down my arms and back. Maria laughed and started rubbing my back. We lay on our stomachs like that for a long time, Maria with her hand on my back, rubbing away the cold.

  I must have fallen asleep because I was somewhere else, with Marco, and I’d fallen in a river or lake or something. Marco was eating ice cream, laughing. Then I felt the sand under my feet, the warmth of the sun on my back. I opened my eyes, thinking of Marco. I’d have to talk him into ditching with us next time. Then I remembered that I hated Marco. I didn’t want him ditching with me. It had been hard enough on Monday having to sit through four classes with him, him not saying anything and me not saying anything, trying to avoid each other, not walk in and out of class at the same time. Then when the 3:00 bell rang in sixth period American history, Marco had turned around to me and said my name, like he wanted to apologize, but I just took my books and left.

  I didn’t want to think about Marco, so I turned on my side, facing Maria, and propped my head on my elbow. My jeans were scratchy with sand, but they were almost dry and they didn’t feel like they were plastered to my legs anymore. The sun had warmed my back and dried my hair against my neck. Everyone else had taken off for pizza but us, and, looking at Maria, I felt good all over.

  I reached over and ran a finger up and down her arm. She opened her eyes, turned on her side, and propped herself on her elbow. Man, I couldn’t believe how good her breasts looked in that black swimsuit. I gotta admit, I was thinking about IT again when, out of the blue, she said, “Sometimes I wake up in the morning and think I’m not going to make it. I look out the window and all I see is black and gray.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I was about to tell her how beautiful she was and that I thought I loved her. But that didn’t seem like the right thing to say anymore. It would be stupid, like I was only trying to make her feel good. She started rubbing her hand slowly up and down my arm, and I thought maybe she was feeling better, but then she lay back down on her stomach. “I just want to be happy.” She turned her head away from me.

  Now I really didn’t know what to do. I reached over and rested my hand on her back. Her skin was warm from the sun, but her long, thick French braid was still damp. I sat up beside her, gently took the rubber band from her hair, slowly undid the braid, and spread her hair across her back so it could dry. She turned on her side and laughed. “So what am I going to do when it dries? I know you don’t know how to French braid.”

  I lay back down beside her, reached over and tucked her hair behind her shoulder. “I want to make you happy,” I said. I was serious, but she was still laughing.

  “How are you going to make me happy?” I could see she was teasing me, so I was mixed up. I started to shrug, but she leaned toward me, whispered “Like this?” and kissed me. So then I thought maybe it would be OK to tell her how beautiful she was and that I thought I loved her. I did and she smiled. “I’ve liked you for a long time. I always thought you were cute. Let’s not ever break up, OK?” she said. I leaned over, parted her lips with my tongue, and kissed her again for a long, warm time.

  We lay there all morning. I finally got the courage to run my finger down her neck, and over her shoulders, and down between her breasts. She reached for my shirt on the sand and pulled it over her shoulders and arms so I could hold her with nobody seeing. I wanted to make love to her so bad, but it’s not like there’s no people at the beach, even on a day like Tuesday when people should be at work. Being sixteen and in love means you can’t ever find a place to be alone. Unless you have a car and can go park some place quiet. I didn’t have a car and neither did Maria.

  Around noon, Maria said she wanted pizza. I didn’t have any money, but she did, so we rolled up our towels and took off for the pier. My shoes were tied together, slung over my shoulder. I held Maria’s shoes in one hand and her hand in the other. The sky was blue. The sun was yellow and hot. The sand was warm under my bare feet. I wondered if we’d ever have started going out if Frank hadn’t laid into me. Probably not. I never saw who she really was before. It occurred to me that Frank had finally beaten some sense into me. Maybe not what he wanted, but who cared what he wanted. I laughed quietly to myself.

  “What?” asked Maria.

  “Oh, nothin
g,” I replied. I threw my arm over her shoulder and pulled her close. Her hair fell down her back and smelled like the ocean and the sun.

  A big crowed was gather under the pier. It was hard to see who was there because everyone was in the shadows, but as we got closer, I recognized some of the kids from Locos. For a minute I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Then I saw Eddy. And behind him a group of Westside Raza gangbangers. Maria must have seen them at the same time because she grabbed my hand and started running toward the pier. “Come on,” she yelled.

  I was scared. I’d been in fights before, but never a gang fight. As we ran, one shoe thumped against my chest and the other thumped against my back. Just as we got under the pier, the shoe in front flew up and kicked my chin so hard I bit my tongue. I could taste blood in my mouth. When I stopped to spit the blood out, Maria pounded me on the back, thinking I was choking. “I’m OK,” I sputtered. We heard Sandra screaming obscenities, and we looked toward the center of the two gangs. Angel and Eddy circled each other in the sand. Sandra stood to one side, cussing them both out.

  Everything seemed to move in slow motion. I heard cursing, but I could also hear the waves crashing in again and again. I took a slow, deep breath. Salt. And dead fish.

  Locos was faced off against Westside Raza, but no one moved to fight except Angel and Eddy. Then a Raza guy I didn’t know cussed me out. He looked too old for high school and he looked big.

  I grabbed Maria’s arm and pulled her away, but she didn’t want to leave. She screamed at Sandra to be careful, to get away. I felt something sharp against the edge of my bare foot. I looked down. A jagged piece of glass from a broken Heinz relish jar stuck up through the sand like a knife. “Be careful,” I hollered at Maria above the sound of the waves and the cussing. “There’s glass.” Either she didn’t hear me or she didn’t care because she grabbed my hand and pulled me back toward the circle.

  Sandra was screaming hysterically. Angel yelled at her to shut up, then reached out a foot, and tripped Eddy. As soon as Eddy was down, Angel pulled a knife. Sandra ran to Eddy and threw herself on top of him, but he shoved her off. She crawled toward Angel, grabbed him around the legs, screamed at him to put the knife away, he’d go to jail. Angel hauled her up by the arm and slapped her away from him. She fell in the sand at Maria’s feet.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I yelled. Eddy threw a handful of sand in in Angel’s face and jumped up to face him.

  Then sirens. Lots of sirens. Everyone froze. I heard a wave hit the pylons. I smelled the dead fish again, the damp sand. I looked down the beach. A yellow lifeguard truck and two cops on ATC’s raced toward us, red lights flashing. For a moment no one moved. Then we scattered for the parking lot, for the pier, for the restrooms. Anywhere we could disappear. I grabbed Maria’s hand and ran with her to the parking lot. Wee found Angel’s car, and I took her in my arms, like we’d been making out the whole time. Kissing was almost impossible. I was so scared, I couldn’t catch my breath. Maria was laughing.

  No one in our car got picked up by the cops, but Sandra didn’t go home with us. She was so mad at Angel, she got a ride with someone else. Her brother rode with us, though, and kept talking about how stupid she was. The guy who’d sat in the middle of the backseat on the way to the beach had moved to the front, but Maria still sat on my lap even thought there was more room. She told Angel he shouldn’t have hit Sandra, that she was just trying to keep him from getting into bad trouble. Angel didn’t say a word the whole way home. Didn’t speed. Didn’t take his eyes of the road. Let cars in front of him. It was scary.

  Angel dropped us off at school ten minutes before the 3:00 bell rang. After we got our backpacks out of the trunk, he drove off. Maria’s bus left before mine, so I hung around with her until she had to get on. My RTD bus pulled up just as I got to the bus stop about a block from school. I crawled on, found a seat in the back, put my backpack on the floor between my legs, leaned back in the seat, and closed my eyes. Frank wouldn’t be home from work yet, but Imelda might guess I’d been to the beach instead of school. And she’d tell Frank. I wanted to get a shower before she noticed.

  I quietly opened the door of the apartment, peeked in, saw Imelda in the kitchen, and hurried to my room. Across the hall, Jennifer sat in a pink baby swing, suspended by a big, bouncy spring from the doorjamb of the bathroom. She was sound asleep, propped up all around by rolled-up baby blankets. What a stupid place to hang a baby! The bathroom smelled like Comet and toilet bowl cleaner. Imelda had probably hung the swing from the door while she was cleaning the bathroom, then left it there after Jennifer had fallen asleep. Like nobody who lived there would ever have to go to the bathroom.

  I glanced toward the kitchen. Imelda dropped bacon into a sizzling hot frying pan, then picked up a mug and took a sip of coffee. She glanced my way. I backed up toward my room, trying to keep her from seeing me. “Don’t wake the baby,” she called in a loud whisper. “She’s been crying all day and I don’t want her to wake up.” She turned back to the stove and flipped the bacon strips with a spatula. She turned the heat down under the frying pan, and used a fork to move the bacon around in the pan while she drank her coffee.

  I looked at Jennifer. Her head was bent to the side, resting on her right shoulder. I had to admit she looked kind of cute all scrunched up in those baby blankets. Maybe I could get away without taking a shower. I looked down at myself. There was already sand in the hall from my shoes. I pulled them off and tossed them into my room, immediately wishing I hadn’t because they thumped so loud on the floor that Jennifer jumped, opened her eyes for a second, then snuggled back asleep. There was sand all over my socks, too, so I pulled them off and threw them in my room. There was sand between my toes and I could feel it scratching my legs under my jeans. I was going to have to take a shower.

  If I was careful, I could move the swing without waking Jennifer up. I reached to the top of the doorjamb, pried apart the clasp that closed on each side of the door, and carried the swing to Frank and Imelda’s room, holding the clamp above my head to keep Jennifer’s butt from bouncing on the floor. I spread the clamp open, but when I started to hook it over the door, one side slipped and I had to grab it to keep Jennifer from falling. She swung into the side of the door, not hard enough to hurt herself, but hard enough to wake up with a howl.

  Dammit, I thought. “It’s OK. It’s OK,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep.” I clamped the swing over the doorjamb and bounced it, trying to get her back to sleep. No luck.

  I heard Imelda toss the fork on the counter. She cussed at me when she came into the hallway and saw that I’d moved the swing. “I didn’t want her waking up,” she said. “How come you moved her?”

  “I had to go to the bathroom,” I mumbled, but Imelda didn’t seem to hear me. She reached into the swing and lifted Jennifer out.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Imelda didn’t say another word to me. Didn’t look at me either, just went back in the kitchen with Jennifer. I was stupid to think she would notice I’d been to the beach. She never noticed anything about me. Her and the baby. And her damn angels. That’s all she cared about.

  There was still Frank to worry about, so I stripped off my sandy jeans and tossed them under the bed. I brushed as much sand as I could off my legs, then swept the sand under the bed with the towel I’d had at the beach. It was full of sand, too, so I finally had to use my T-shirt to finished the job.

  I peeked out the door. Imelda was still in the kitchen with Jennifer, so I stepped quietly across the hall into the bathroom, closed the door, stripped off my underwear, and got in the shower. I didn’t usually take a shower after school, but if Imelda asked, which she probably wouldn’t, I’d say I got knocked in the dirt in P.E. and needed to clean up for work.

  I had so much sand in my hair, I had to wash it twice. When I turned off the water, I noticed sand in the bottom of the tu
b. Imelda might not notice me, but she would notice if I made a mess. I turned the water on again, took a washcloth, and tried to swish the sand toward the drain. I was so intent on getting every grain of sand that when there was a loud knock on the door, I jumped about a foot and knocked my head on the sink.

  “Ow,” I said, dropping the wet washcloth on the floor. I rubbed my head.

  “I gotta use the bathroom. What’s taking so long?”

  “I’ll be right out,” I yelled, over the sound of the tub water “Just making sure I leave the tub clean.” That sounded lame. I finally washed the last grain of sand down the drain and wiped up the floor with my towel. The bathroom looked about the same as when I came in. I didn’t have a clean towel to wrap around me, so I peeked out the door, saw Imelda had gone back to the kitchen, and hurried across the hall to my room.

  I hadn’t gone to school that day, but I did learn something. Next time I ditched to the beach, I was going to shower off under one of those outside showers. And maybe I could save my money and get a bathing suit. Anything to make ditching easier.

  Marco came into McDonalds that night and got in my line. He ordered a large coke, gave me the money, and asked, “Where were you today?” I shrugged, looked over his shoulder, and asked the next guy in line if I could help him. Marco took his coke and left, which was fine with me.

  On Wednesday morning I wrote my own excuse note. It said I’d been sick on Tuesday. I signed Frank’s name to it and met Maria outside the attendance office at school. She had her hair down, pulled back with a purple ribbon. She had on tight black jeans, a yellow tank top, and a white shirt, unbuttoned and tied around her waist. I wanted my arms around her a lot more than I wanted to go to biology, so after we’d gotten our absentee slips, I asked if she wanted to ditch first period with me under the football bleachers. She did.

  We were halfway across the football field when I heard the 7:50 bell ring. I didn’t see any assistant principals around or campus cops. The green field had just been mowed and I could smell the cut grass. The sky was blue and the sun was warm. By the time the first period tardy bell rang at 8:00, Maria was in my arms and my hands were under her tank top.

  It was a great place to make out, just behind the locker room where the visiting football team changed. A small gray cinder block concession stand stood on the backside of the locker room, with about a five-foot-space between the two. A campus cop had to be right on top of you to catch you ditching. Whoever designed the football field for Harrison High School didn’t know teenagers at all. You didn’t leave spaces where kids could ditch and make out because what they’d do is ditch and make out. At least that’s what Maria and I did first period. All week. Except for Friday. Friday we ditched to the beach again. Sandra went with us. She and Angel had made up, again. No gang fights at the beach. No cops. Nothing wrong at all except that I couldn’t figure out how to get Maria and me alone.

  Saturday morning I didn’t have to work and Maria did, so when Frank asked me if I wanted to shoot hoops over at the park I said yes. As we walked past Marco’s place on our way to the park, Marco and his two younger brothers, Carlos and Miguel, piled out the front door, carrying a football. Frank right away invited them to play basketball with us. I didn’t say a word to Marco all the way to the park, not even hi, but Frank teamed us together against the two younger boys and him.

  The concrete of the basketball court was hot and it wasn’t long before we’d all taken our T-shirts off and thrown them in a heap at the foot of the big chainlink fence that surrounded the court. Next to the basketball court were two tennis courts that were already in use when we got there. Occasionally a tennis ball popped into our court. One of the tennis players would shout “Ball!” and we’d have to stop our game and toss the ball back.

  Frank was so much bigger and stronger than either Marco or me that most of the time we didn’t have a chance. When he drove to the basket he made a basket. The only time we could steal the ball was when one of Marco’s brothers tried to dribble past us. Frank played hard and he didn’t give an inch. A couple of times he knocked me down and I scraped the palms of my hands on the hot concrete. When Marco and I finally stopped one of his drives and stole the ball away from him, we were so happy that we forgot about being mad at each other. We high-fived and threw our arms around each other.

  The next time I had the ball, Frank slapped it out of my hands, crashing it into the middle of the chainlink fence. I protested, but he grabbed me in a playful headlock. He ruffled my hair and patted me on the cheek. “Throw me the ball,” he yelled at little Carlos who had been dribbling the ball while Frank horsed around with me. Frank took it on the run and drove to the basket while Marco and I just stood there. “Two Points,” he shouted, pointing at us with both hands.

  “Not fair,” Marco and I hollered in unison. But the basket counted.

  Two hours later, walking home with Big Gulps Frank bought us at the 7/11, I felt great all over, despite my skinned hands, the sweat running down the back, and my aching legs. Maybe Frank would be OK again, like in the old days when it was just the two of us with our grandparents. He looked out for me then. Things seemed to be OK between Marco and me, too. Maybe it would be like before, but better because now there was Maria. And then, on Monday, I got my report card.