Muchacho (12 page)

Henry Dominguez’s group got a good problem, too, about what if a couple of stupid kids keep disrupting your class, so the teacher makes a real stupid seating chart where you don’t get to sit by anybody good and maybe you even have to sit right next to the teacher’s desk or beside some kid who picks his nose and wipes it on his pants all day long. Henry’s group solved the seating problem and came up with a plan that was so good that Beecher actually used it. The plan was: Some kids need to sit in the same seats every day or else they freak out, so they get to claim a seat and it’s their seat even if they are absent. Other kids get bored from sitting in the same seat beside the same people every day, so they get to choose a new seat every day from the ones that are left. But nobody gets to sit in the back if they have a bad grade because then they cause too much trouble and everybody has to listen to their same old shit all the time. So, if you have a D or a F, you have to sit in the front two rows. That makes those losers work a little bit harder so they can get away from the teacher. It’s a pretty good plan and I like it because I get to sit in the back corner, which is my favorite because I’m like
mi primo
Enrique when it comes to sitting in a place with a lot of other people. We like to sit with our back against the wall so we don’t have to worry who’s behind us and what they could be thinking to do.

Jaime’s group got this totally lame problem of what should you do if your favorite teacher has bad breath which is a totally stupid problem because teachers went to college so they
should be smart enough to notice if all the kids are leaning way back whenever that teacher talks to them, and even though teacher pay is pretty crappy, they could at least buy some peppermint gum or some Tic Tacs if they couldn’t afford some new teeth.

I tried to think of how I could use that problem plan to get rid of my current situation but my problems are too big. Even if I could figure out how to make Papi not be so mad about me lying to him and wrecking his car, I would still have the little problem of cutting school and making up the assignments, plus the real big problem of Lupe’s father. Mr. Garcia is not the kind of guy you could brainstorm any good solutions about how to handle him because he knows how to brainstorm back at you. Like when they go to court, one of the lawyers brainstorms how to stick somebody in jail and the other lawyer brainstorms how to keep the guy out of jail or get a deal. All the lawyers are smart enough to graduate college and they got all kind of tricks up the sleeve of their three-piece suits, but Mr. Garcia always wins.

Lupe told me she had to work real hard to come up with an argument for why she should be allowed to transfer to Bright Horizons because Mr. Garcia didn’t want her to go to an alternative school. He wanted to just sue Cheyenne for beating up Lupe all the time at the regular high school, or else sue the school for suspending Lupe because of being involved in a violent altercation. But Lupe didn’t want to sue anybody. So she made up a case, like she was going to court, with
statistics that show how many kids graduate from Bright Horizons and how many of them go to college, and how come it wouldn’t be right to sue either Cheyenne who is retarded or the school district because they don’t even have enough money for computers in the library.

“I only won my case fifty percent,” Lupe said. “Daddy only agreed that I could go to Bright Horizons for one semester and then he would evaluate the situation. But with Daddy, fifty percent is pretty good.”

If Lupe can only win fifty percent and Mr. Garcia loves her so much, then I figure my chances aren’t too good. But I’m not giving up. I’ll just keep my nose clean and keep brain-storming.

I
BEEN THINKING THAT SINCE NOBODY KNOWS ME VERY GOOD
in Truth or Consequences, I could maybe change a little bit. Like I could shave my three chin hairs which probably don’t look as cool as I thought they did. And I could tuck in my shirt and not wear a bandanna and be a intellectual. I could be Eduardo instead of Eddie and start out getting good grades, so right away I would be lumped with the kiss-ass kids instead of with the losers. I would probably get beat up a little bit, but I can handle it. Besides, after I graduate, I can be as smart as I want to because after you get out of school people don’t beat you up for being smart. They give you money instead.

It’s a good thing I’m just in a gang with
mis primos
in Rosa blanca and not with a real gang because I couldn’t just
decide to quit hanging with a real gang, I would have to get jumped out and maybe even killed. Jaime’s brother Xavier tried to get out of the 10th Street Posse and they beat him down so bad they broke all his teeth and they told him if he went back to school they would kill him, so he had to go get a GED instead. Xavier wanted to get out of the Posse because his girlfriend had a baby and Xavier wanted to be a regular dad and not a gangbanger whose kids would probably be little bangers. I used to think I needed the gang so the drug dealers wouldn’t try to make me be their go-boy because I would never be walking by myself where they could get me. But after I met Lupe, I started hanging around with her most of the time, and I started thinking about my future just like Xavier. If they heard me say it, they would kill me for sure but I think maybe if the real gangbangers had somebody to love them real good they wouldn’t need to be in a gang. Even if your mother loves you, maybe it isn’t enough, because your mother isn’t out there on the streets where you have to deal with all kinds of shit. Maybe you need somebody your own age who can look you eye to eye and see you for real and still love you anyways and that person tells you to stop acting like a loser and get some goals for your future. Then you don’t need a gang or even a bunch of homies to hang with because you don’t feel alone and you are going someplace.

These are my new thoughts that I am creating so I can have a new reality where I’m not a loser and a negative influence over Lupe. I got these new thoughts from reading that
book Sgt. Cabrera gave me. If I wouldn’t have read that book, I wouldn’t have decided to be a intellectual because I had two other plans. One was to go out and get a gun and get real drunk and steal a car and drive around with the gun on the dashboard so when the cops pulled me over, I would reach for the gun and they would shoot me dead. That wasn’t too good of a plan because then Lupe would be sad forever and what if the cop was Sgt. Cabrera who would feel real bad for killing a kid she gave a book to. My other plan was to take off with Enrique and go to Mexico except there aren’t hardly any good jobs there which is why so many people come here and pick chiles for about two cents an hour.

But after I read
The Four Agreements
, I gave up those plans which turned out to be a real good thing. I wasn’t even going to read that book because I looked it over a little bit back when Sgt. Cabrera first gave it to me and it looked pretty lame. It’s a real skinny book with hardly any big words. You’re just supposed to do four things and your life will change: Always do your best. Don’t take anything personally. Never make assumptions and be impeccable with your word. That’s the kind of stuff they teach you in kindergarten or first grade, except little kids don’t know what
assumption
or
impeccable
means so the teachers just say, “Don’t go around thinking you know everything and don’t tell lies and if somebody calls you a bad name, they’re the stupid one.” So it didn’t seem like a book you would give to somebody and then act like it was a real big deal.

But I had a lot of time on my hands. After I got arrested,
Papi took my cell phone, so I can’t even text anybody, and he canceled the Internet, so no e-mail, neither. For a couple days I had electronics withdrawal. My ears felt so empty that it made a loud echo inside my head and I was wishing that I could go someplace to get away from myself. If I wasn’t a secret reader, I probably would of lost it like Jaime’s neighbor who married a church girl and then tried to quit drinking and smoking and watching porn all at the same time and it freaked him out so bad he drank some Drano and had to get locked up for his own good. But whenever I felt like I was losing it, I would just read a book.

After I read all the books in the house, I was packing up my stuff to take over to Tío’s and I found
The Four Agreements
under my socks. I figured I might as well read it because even though Sgt. Cabrera was a cop, she was kind of cool and you could tell from looking in her eyes that she was still hanging in there. Sometimes if you look at old people, even if they aren’t drunk or stoned, they have this look in their eyes like it’s all over so who cares. Maybe they wish they never got married or why did they have that last kid or why couldn’t they have normal kids instead of the ones they got and how come they let their wife make them sell their motorcycle, or they could be thinking that it’s all just a big rip-off because even if you live your life real clean and work hard and save your money and go to church every week and never beat your kids or have adultery, you could still end up with a life that sucks.

As soon as I read that book, I could see why Sgt. Cabrera
said you have to read it with your heart and not your head because it sounds too simple to give you any good advice unless you take it to the next level. Like instead of just not telling lies to other people, you shouldn’t tell lies to yourself, neither. Like if you really care about graduating high school then don’t tell yourself you don’t care and flunk all your classes and then wonder why you’re such a loser.

Before, I didn’t get it when Sgt. Cabrera said your thoughts create your reality. That sounds like one of those feeling-good posters they hang on the wall that nobody reads. But this time, I got it. The light turned on in my brain and it was shining so bright that I could see all my lame ideas just sitting in there looking at me with a stupid expression on their face. Like I saw that thought which was
How long could a girl like Lupe love a loser like me?
And I knew if I kept that thought in my head, Lupe would stop loving me and I would be a loser for real and end up in jail or something.

I used to didn’t get the connection because I skipped the middle part about intentions. I was thinking that your thoughts can’t create reality because if that worked then all those losers who think they are going to be NBA superstars or rap masters someday would actually be those things. You can’t just think stuff and create a reality, you have to think of an intention to make something happen. Like you can just go around thinking how much you hate school and you still won’t be a juvenile delinquent unless you make an intention to get in trouble like I did, so I ended up at the alt school. And I created the intention to get a girlfriend, so I joined
ballroom dance and got Lupe and now we got our own reality. Then I created the stupid intention to lie to Papi about his car and I created everybody getting arrested.

So I kicked all the old thoughts out of my head to make room for a bunch of new ones with good intentions attached to them. Now I don’t even think of letting go of Lupe or being a loser. Instead, I am creating the thought of being a success and making the intention to graduate and get a good job and maybe even go to college so I can be the kind of man who can look Lupe’s father straight in the eye for as long as it takes.

The reason I’m thinking on maybe going to college is this dude from New Mexico State came to McElroy’s class to inspire us to go to college and he was a professor even though he was Mexican and had a mustache and a ponytail. After he got done inspiring us and everybody was fooling around, I asked that professor what if somebody’s grades were real good for a few years and then real bad for some more years and then real good right at the end. He said as long as your senior year is real good, you can probably go to NMSU if you graduate and get some good recommendations from your teachers. McElroy might give me a good recommendation because he would be happy that he was a good influence and I didn’t drop out of school, but I don’t want to ask him. He probably doesn’t even know all the stuff I been thinking, but it’s not right to ask somebody to do you a favor after you been going around thinking they are a stupid
pinche
dick-head.

Beecher would probably give me a recommendation if I asked her unless she already forgot who I am. She’s still working at the library so I guess she didn’t go teach those Indian kids like I thought she would. She probably wants to wait until next year so she can start fresh instead of taking over for some crappy teacher that got fired or just quit because it was too hard trying to motivate people like me and Henry Dominguez and T.J. Ritchie.

At first, I was thinking that maybe I would check out some library books sometime when Beecher wasn’t working and then the next time I went to pick up Letty and Juanito from story hour I would put the books in that book drop and I would put my journal in there, too. If some other library lady got it, she would probably just throw my journal away since it doesn’t have my name on it or anything. But if Beecher got it, she might recognize how I write. She might even remember some of the other stuff I wrote. Like this one essay she gave me extra credit for having a sense of humor. Beecher would give you a better grade for having a sense of humor even if you used a swearword or bad spelling because she liked us to have our own ideas.

“You can always correct the spelling and grammar in an interesting essay,” Beecher used to tell us, “but if your essay is perfect and boring, then it’s perfectly boring.” Before they killed Saddam Hussein, Beecher asked us to write in our journal what we thought Saddam would be like if he was a kid in our class at Bright Horizons. And here’s what I wrote: